Faculty Research
Political Science Professor Michael Butler's book Selling a 'Just' War: Framing, Legitimacy, and U.S. Military Intervention sheds light on how American political leaders sell the decision to intervene with military force to the public and how a just war frame is employed in US foreign policy. He provides three post-Cold War examples of foreign policy crises: the Persian Gulf War (1990-91), Kosovo (1999), and Afghanistan (2001).
News Releases
Political Science Professor Robert Boatright's book Interest Groups and Campaign Finance Reform in the United States and Canada is a comparative study of changes in interest groups' political activities over the past decade. In the early 2000s, the United States and Canada implemented new campaign finance laws restricting the ability of interest groups to make political contributions and to engage in political advertising. Whereas both nations' legislative reforms sought to reduce the role of interest groups in campaigns, these laws have had opposite results in the two nations. In the United States, interest groups remained influential by developing broad coalitions aimed at mobilizing individual voters and contributors. In Canada, interest groups largely withdrew from election campaigns, and, thus, important voices in elections have gone silent. This book explains such disparate results by placing campaign finance reforms in the context of ongoing political and technological changes.
Political Science Professor Srini Sitaraman's book State Participation in International Treaty Regimes uses U.N. treaty ratification data on arms control, environment and human rights
to investigate whether domestic factors may ultimately be responsible for influencing why a state resists or joins international treaty regimes.
Political Science Professor Mark C. Miller's book The View of the Courts from the Hill:Interactions between Congress and the Federal Judiciary examines the interactions between Congress and the federal courts with primary attention given to congressional attitudes toward the federal judiciary and federal judges. Miller’s secondary objective is to expose the nature of contemporary right-wing threats to judicial independence from conservative Republicans in Congress and the Religious Right. For Miller, the attacks from the right threaten to silence the voice of the federal courts in the inter-institutional dialogue. Miller supplements his research by loosely structured interviews with members of Congress, key congressional staff, federal judges, judicial branch employees and lobbyists.
Political Science Professor Valerie Sperling's book Altered States: The Globalization of Accountability
tackles questions such as: Is globalization good for democracy? Or has it made our governing
institutions less accountable to citizens?
Sperling traces the impact of economic, political, military, judicial, and civic globalization on state accountability and investigates the degree to which transnational institutions are themselves responsible to the people whose lives they alter.
Interviews with Prof. Sperling at New Hampshire Public Radio and KOPN Radio
Political Science Professor Kristen Williams' book Ethnic Conflict: A Systematic Approach to Cases of Conflict
bridges the subfields of international relations and comparative politics.
As ethnic groups clash, the international community faces the challenge of understanding the multiple causes of violence and formulating solutions that will bring about peace. Never losing sight of their analytical framework, the authors provide richly detailed case studies that help students understand both the unique and shared causes of each conflict.
Political Science professor Paul W. Posner released his first book, State, Market, and Democracy in Chile (Palgrave Macmillan).
State, Market, and Democracy in Chile assesses the quality of Chilean democracy by examining the impact of free market reforms on the urban poor's incentives for political participation and capacity for collective action. Using in-depth analysis of labor market, social welfare, and state reforms, along with extensive interviews with party officials and shantytown residents, Posner's study reveals the manner in which neoliberal reform has undermined the urban poor's incentives and ability to hold public officials accountable. In so doing, he demonstrates how economic liberalization has negatively affected the quality of Chilean democracy.